Regardless of his close association with significant figures in the avant-garde, above all Cecil Taylor and David S. Ware, bassist- bandleader-composer Parker is also, it can be rightfully claimed, a soul artist. Or rather a musician who understands the importance of the blues as a root of all modern black music. While that was made most explicit by the Curtis Mayfield tribute album he recorded several years ago, this set by his longstanding quartet Raining On The Moon underlines the fact with a collection of quite beautiful songs that were cut during the same session that yielded the group’s fine 2007 album Cornmeal Dance, hence an obvious sense of continuity. First and foremost the melodies, well served by Leena Conquest’s gilded voice, stand tall in a Curtis-Rosetta-Sam Cooke gospel-fired lineage, and at times, as on ‘Doson Ngoni Blues’, there is a distinct undertow of Bill Withers. But Parker’s trump card is an ability to organically weave in elements of free improvisation and double-time swing into this emotionally rich thematic base without the result sounding either incoherent or contrived. The net result is a band that brings together small group jazz sensibilities and an R&B vocabulary, albeit acoustic rather than electric, that has a depth of feeling to match all the musical finesse.